A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

But in the public search for answers to the crisis, the left was unable to
draw the contours of any alternative societal project, to take advantage
of the crisis of market radicalism and seize the opportunity for public
discussion of a leftist counter-model, and for a change in the terms of
political discourse in its own favour. This failure revealed a profound
weakness of the left.
This is not to suggest, however, that there was any expectation that the
left draw up a plan for a new society. Rather, it is a question of combining
the ideas which outline a society based on solidarity with suggestions
for how its progressive transformation might be achieved, and of explaining
what qualities a society must have in order to move closer to
freedom, equality, solidarity, sustainability and peace. It should be recalled
that: “The negative and the destructive can be decreed, the constructive
and the positive cannot. A thousand problems. Only experience
[is] able to make corrections and open up new ways. Only untrammelled,
burgeoning life can come up with a thousand new forms and
improvisations, draw upon creative power, and correct all aberrations itself.
Public life in states with limited freedom is therefore so meagre,
so impoverished, so schematic, so barren, because by excluding democracy,
it cuts itself off from the vital sources of all intellectual wealth and
progress” (Luxemburg, … : 360).
It could turn out that the most important task in preparing for a second
transformation is to strengthen the capacity for transformation of today’s
societies. The key demands are:
� Raising the degrees of freedom: ensuring a maximum variety of options
(organizations, knowledge, modes of operation, forms of socialization)
through a constant process of social innovation;
� Growing equality: expansion of a broad public infrastructure to facilitate
the information, self-organization and cooperation of citizens and
securing their participation in a democratic search for new paths and in
decision-making, through access to the conditions for a self-determined
life;
153